International Space Station: Russians Still Busy

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Five spaceships are parked at the space station including the SpaceX Dragon Freedom; the Cygnus space freighter; the Soyuz MS-21 crew ship; and the Progress 80 and 81 resupply ships.(NASA)

Earlier today, NASA announced that an uncrewed Russian cargo ship, Progress 81, arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) without incident. Work continues among the Americans and Russians aboard the ISS regardless of the situation on the ground, which is reassuring.

As NASA administrator Bill Nelson said last month at a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing, there have been a number of “misleading headlines” about the end of Russia’s participation in the ISS program. He also highlighed how US astronauts were able to work together with Soviets during the Cold war. Specifically, he stated:

I see nothing in the very even-keeled professional relationship between the cosmonauts and the astronauts, between mission control in Moscow and Houston, in the training of Russian cosmonauts in America and the training of American astronauts in Moscow and Baikonur…I see nothing that has interrupted that professional relationship, no matter how awful Putin is conducting a war with such disastrous results in Ukraine.